


Let it Snow

by SpringZephyr



Category: Inazuma Eleven
Genre: Background Gouenji Yuuka, Fluff, Inazuma Eleven Secret Santa 2020, M/M, Snow Angels, Snowball Fight, building a snowman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:53:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28187193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpringZephyr/pseuds/SpringZephyr
Summary: It doesn't snow like it does in Hokkaido, but it does snow enough to make Kazemaru happy again.
Relationships: Gouenji Shuuya & Kazemaru Ichirouta
Kudos: 7





	Let it Snow

**Author's Note:**

> I was in such disbelief over the Chii/Tsuki thing that I wrote a back up fic just in case. This time, I tried taking advantage of Inazuma Eleven's vague timeline to write a fic that takes place after season two... I actually don't remember if there's a time gap between seasons two and three, so it probably still doesn't work. But I tried.

Gouenji's only warning was the sound of Kazemaru's laughter, deliberately cut short, and an amicable warning from the other boy to "think fast."

A snowball hit his cheek as he turned around.

It exploded on impact, obscuring Gouenji’s vision with snow and more snow, and his ears focused on the heady sound of Kazemaru laughing again. He could lose all of his other senses right now and probably not notice, but scrubbed at his eyes with the back of a bare hand anyway, because the only thing better than hearing Kazemaru laugh was being able to see him at the same time.

  
“Too bad you didn’t get to visit Hokkaido with us,” Kazemaru continued laughing, but he didn’t apologize. He crossed his arms in front of him, hands tucked tight against his sides, like he was trying to contain his laughter and failing.

This was fine with Gouenji, because Kazemaru had nothing to apologize for. Gouenji was hot-blooded enough that a little snow meant nothing to him, but he’d heard Kazemaru apologize enough since that thing with the Dark Emperors, and had barely seen him smile in exchange.

“Yeah,” Gouenji agreed, voice soft, “too bad.”

“It hardly ever snows here, and when it does, it’s gone the next day. Either the sun melts it, or it rains the next day -- did I tell you I got to try snowboarding in Hokkaido?”

As much as he acknowledges why Hitomiko behaved the way she did, Gouenji really wishes he could’ve seen more of Japan inside the Inazuma Caravan. “Did I miss out on a lot?”

The answer, he thought, was fairly obvious.

“The chance to see me wipe out,” Kazemaru replied, leaning to one side in a mimicry of what it had been like to fall off a snowboard. “And also…”

He scooped up another fistful of snow, pats it into a ball, and tossed it in Gouenji’s direction with a smirk. Using an underhanded throw, this time. Gouenji jumped to the right -- not quite fast enough, a second ball exploding on the sleeve of his jacket.

The snow was powdery, still. His shoulders, and Kazemaru’s ponytail -- and by extension, the hair on his own head -- are covered by a thin layer of dust-like snow. The remains of Kazemaru’s most recent snowball clung to the fabric of his clothes, vaguely resembling clumps of the powdered sugar his grandma sprinkled on pancakes for him and Yuuka sometimes.

“This,” Kazemaru finished.

The stuff on the ground was fluffy, not like anything he’d seen in the pictures of Hokkaido. Maybe because there was so little of it?

“We got into a snowball fight with Hakuren’s soccer club!”

Gouenji’s response was to bend down, scraping together some ammunition of his own. He noted the way his fingers touched the gravel underneath, and the way both the ground and the snow felt wet against his skin.

With his faster reflexes, and having had an inkling of what was coming, Kazemaru danced out of the way. Quite literally, as that was the only way Gouenji could think to describe it -- light on his feet, looking, somehow, as though this were something he did every day. His ponytail fanned out behind him as he turned, Gouenji’s snowball splattering solidly against the trunk of the large maple tree outside his house instead.

Much of the snow fell away, rejoining its former family on the ground. From this perspective, as the one doing the throwing and not having snow thrown at him, he could see how little of it there really was.

“I bet the snowballs you can make in Hokkaido are a lot bigger,” Gouenji wagered, speaking up for the first time in a while.

Given that he was from the Kanto region, where it rarely snowed, and had lived there all of his life, it currently felt as though he were covered in snow. And it was still snowing, but compared to Hokkaido, there was really so little of it. When he went inside, it would melt instantly off his sneakers. He’d be able to rub the warmth back into his fingers in a matter of minutes, even though grandma would probably moan about the cold seeping into her bones all day.

“The snowbanks in Hokkaido,” Kazemaru replied, gesturing somewhere around mid-thigh level, “go up to  _ here _ . And that’s just where the snow is leveled. There were some places where the snow was piled almost as high as the school’s rooftop!”

Now, that would normally be where Gouenji drew the line for plausibility.

Except he had more important things to focus on right now, namely getting revenge on Kazemaru for both of his cheap shots earlier, while Kazemaru was too busy gesturing to notice.

“N-no fair!”   
  
"Fair? You should have thought about that before you told me to 'think fast'." Gouenji smirks. "There aren't any candied apples here."

There was something worth thinking about. Something he and Kazemaru would be able to experience together, barring another unlikely attack from aliens, once the days turned warmer.

The time it took for both of them to prepare another snowball gave Gouenji just enough time to wonder, "has Kazemaru ever been on a ferris wheel before?" Then they began throwing snowballs at each other in earnest, a flurry of back and forth explosions that put what was currently falling from the sky to shame.

It was kind of like going to war, but using the fluffiest ammunition possible.

The back and forth continued for a while, both of them pelting the other with snowballs, until Kazemaru laughed out a request for a truce and a chance to show Gouenji how to make a snow fort instead. Except the snow doesn’t cling to itself as well as it had in Hokkaido, and there’s not quite enough of it to make a proper wall. Gouenji, not really understanding the theory behind fort building in the first place, observed patiently and without complaint.

It was Kazemaru who finally called it quits, asking if Gouenji wanted to learn how to make a miniature snowman instead.

"Don't we need a carrot for that?"

"Why?"

"Oh, um…" Gouenji, sticking his hands in his jacket pockets to warm up, fixed his eyes on a spot slightly to the right of Kazemaru. "It's something you see in movies -- a carrot, and… and eyes made out of coal. So I thought -- "

“You know what I just thought of?” Kazemaru interrupts him suddenly. He doesn’t wait for Gouenji to ask what. “Yuuka is going to be jealous when she finds out we made a snowman without her.”

So they go back inside, tell Yuuka to put on her warmest jacket, and make snow angels together all afternoon.   



End file.
